such a privilege, they did so and came back saying, "Brother,
heap more ashes on your head!"

Frequent divorce is a natural result of these unhappy marriages. Divorce
in any land is a social evil but in Egypt it is especially so, because
the divorce laws are such that in a peculiar way woman is degraded by
them.

It is difficult to obtain exact figures regarding the percentage of
divorce, as all cases are not recorded. There are some who say 50 per
cent. of marriages end in divorce, others say 80 per cent., and a
prominent Moslem when asked said 95 per cent. An experienced missionary
when asked her opinion, said, "Divorce is so common that to find a woman
who lives all her life with one husband is the exception."

In fact it is such an exception that it is a subject for remark, and a
visitor in a house where such happy conditions exist never fails to be
told about it.

Many women have been divorced several times, and a woman of twenty years
of age may be living with her third husband.

A native Bible woman who had worked among Mohammedans for fourteen years
when asked, "How many men or women of twenty-five years of age she
thought likely to be living with their original partners?" said, "Do you
mean that they should have kept to each other and that neither has been
divorced or married anybody else?"--"Yes." She laughed and said,
"Perhaps one in two thousand."

This was probably an exaggeration, but it shows that divorce is very
common, and that the percentage is even higher than those who love Egypt
and her people like to admit. It almost seems that the history of one's
Mohammedan acquaintances in Egypt might be given in an endless stream of
incidents about divorce and the intrigue and hate and jealousy attendant
on this, the greatest social evil of Egypt.

Many a young man has no hesitation about marrying and divorcing, keeping
up the process for a year or so till he at last finds a wife to suit
him. If it didn't degrade those he has cast aside, he might be excused
for doing so, as he has had no chance to choose his wife intelligently.

A young man of some spirit was determined to have a wife to please him
and who would be congenial to him. Seeing no other way to accomplish it,
he married and divorced in rapid succession six times. The seventh was a
queenly young woman, gentle and refined in all her ways, in whom the
heart of her husband might well rejoice, yet the terror daily hung over
her that she might be